A note on my three blogs

A note on my blogs

(1) vio; in love with india - this one is the main blog about my Indian adventures, which started in 2005. I don't write much on this blog these days because I prefer to write privately in the confidential blog. But check out the categories and the index to figure out your way. I have kept some older posts not about India but which I still find interesting or relevant in Old words. Also check out my new, fun category Only in India in which I post photos of funny, unique, Indian situations...

(2) vio; sounds of india - this is my blog of sounds, because India wouldn't be as incredible if it was not so vibrant and just so full of incredible sounds!

(3) vio; confidential - this an extension of my main blog in which I post entries I do not want to reveal to the entire webspace for privacy or sensitivity reasons. You must receive an invitation from me and then accept the invitation to be able to read it. You may email me if you are interested in receiving an invitation.

Enjoy!

Saturday, 18 December 2004

We had the gorgeous cathedral all for ourselves. All the chairs had been cleared to the sides. We filled the dancefloor; the best venue possible. People gradually arrived; got changed and started to fill the dancefloor. I noticed a good friend of my flatmate, whom I had met once and really got along well. We were both surprised to see her there; she was dancing very gracefully - obviously a ballet dancer. Later I noticed a guy who I had seen playing at an acoustic night three weeks ago, and finally two ladies from my yoga classes. I was amazed. I feel my life has started again since my split-up liberation; it obviously shows in the people I now meet. The right people for me... finally.

I was a bit nervous to start dancing myself but finally I did; it was too beautiful and the music was the best music I could ever have dreamt of. All very much in the type of Dead Can Dance, tribal, earthly, folky, classical music etc. I removed my shoes because they felt like a weight round my feet and I felt much more grounded and free on the soles of my feet. Finally we all gathered around the organising lady and we started a... dancing meditation! I was amazed! We started standing still and focusing on our breath, eyes closed, and gradually added movement from the head, down to the neck, to the shoulders, the arms, the hand, the back, the hips, the knees, the feet... And then I was gone. It was a celebration of the miracle of the human body, letting ourselves be taken by the Spirit and the Dance. It was truly wonderful. I danced for two hours non-stop. I did moves I had never dared doing before. Playing with my balance, with my skirt, turning round and round and round until the arches of the cathedral spinned like a whirlpool around me. I had danced a little bit like that only secretly in my bedroom. I had imagined it in my dreams, I had wished there would be such a wonderful place somewhere, I had wished I would meet such like-minded people. I had tried to find them in the 'goth' scene, I had dreamed Finsternis could be like that. And yesterday, there it was. And there I was. Dancing like I had never done before, letting myself go completely, wondering where all those movements came from. I was so free! Everybody was so free! I used the whole dancefloor, I used my whole body. There was no thinking, there was no mind. I just was. I was alive. It felt like I let the spirit use my body to move me. I didn't think about what to do. It just happened.

There were about 100-150 people there. Everybody looked amazingly beautiful. People danced together, some people danced with the floor, others danced with the pillars of the cathedral. Some even screamed. It was a gathering of spirthrough. We all loved each other unconditionally. We were all brothers and sisters. There was no way to be shy. People from all ages. Humanity at its best.

At the end we all formed a huge round, holding one another's hand. And then we all sung a carol for Christmas. I didn't even know the melody but I sung it anyway. And to close the event, after this we all hugged. Anybody around us. Huge loving hugs to people we didn't know, as though we were all from the same family. (Which we are, anyway...) It was truly wonderful. I felt blessed...

Tuesday, 23 November 2004

My mind is boiling with ideas at the moment. It is incredible the amount of stuff I have learnt in the past six months, how much I have grown. Through yoga and meditation and yogic philosophy and buddhist philosophy and work on myself (they are all the same). Some days I feel like I understand the laws of Life... (however pretentious as it may sound!)

It's been 10 years since I've been trying to figure out what I want to do in my life. After I finished my Business degree in 1999 I thought I'd work for a bit and then study something I'd enjoy and then find what I want to do from there. Well, I ended-up working for about 5 years, and then indeed I found that MSc in Developmental Linguistics. I thought, 'Great I'll do that and then I'll do a PhD since I had loved researching for my first dissertation - research for the sake of it'. As I wouldn't have wanted to do research in Business I had to find a field in which I could perform that research. So I had finally found a subject I'd love and I'd do research in that. But it's not that easy. In the last six months I've learnt so much about myself and I've had a lot of revelations and I have also learnt that a PhD would be a pointless option.

More specifically I have come to believe that Western science goes against human nature... I think Western people believe that they can rule Nature and that is a blatant illusion. Mother Nature made us, and Western human beings see things the other way round; we refuse the laws of Nature; we refuse Life. Nature made us and we behave as if we had made Nature. And Nature gives us countless signs and lessons, or attempts to, but we never listen to Her.

Every single time I read about Cognitive Neuroscience of Language that's what strikes me. Researchers keep wanting to refine their research (methodology) designs in order to refine their theories, in order to answer any possible questions. Researchers want to know exactly where syntax and morphology and phonology and semantics etc. are located in the brain. We know that, roughly, first language(s) acquired in an early age are located in quite a specific area of the left hemisphere of the brain, whilst subsequent languages (acquired after puberty) are more diffusely located across both hemispheres of the brain. But there are always exceptional cases cropping up, and designs are never quite appropriate and we should refined them in order to account for any variables and blah di blah di blah because we want to know exactly where this and that and that is, and we want to refine our stastistical designs and blah di blah di blah...

Well, it is never going to be perfect. Perfection doesn't exist anyway - or rather, on a higher level, perfection is. Researchers never seem to accept that we will never be able to account for all the variables, that we will never be able to know exactly how Nature works. That is because Nature made us and we will never ever, ever be able to pintpoint Her. Nature is way beyond us. We are within Nature and we will never be able to rise above Nature. So researchers spend lifetimes wanting to know this and that, endlessly, but where is the point of all this knowing when so many people need love and food and water and shelter and people still fight endlessly in the name of pieces of land, which, belong to no-one anyway!?!? So yeah, spending over three years of my life researching a very specific topic of linguistics would be pointless. I have learnt a lot about linguistics but I have learnt enough and there are too many things I'm interested in so getting too attached to one subject would mean missing out on too many others. I do want to spend my life researching in fact. I want to grow and I want to learn, always. But there has to be a point. And that point will always only be Dharma.

Science is this:

When we have a headache these days most of us take pain killers. But can science get rid of pain? Well no. However powerful a painkiller scientists manage to develop will not get rid of the pain because THAT is not the point. The point is that pain is a feedback from our body that should be understood, learnt from, and responded to appropriately. Pain should not just be numbed. Pain killers will never get rid of the pain because Nature is the only one to be able to ged rid of the pain and all science will be able to do is create an illusion that the pain is gone. The problem is still there. It is only hidden, and it will come back later in another form, often even more painful. We need to solve the root of the problem. And that science cannot do; only Nature can do. Western science goes against Nature because Nature always has the last say.

At the care home all the old folk take laxative to help their bowel move. Today one of the ladies was crying on the toilet. Do they drink water? No. They have about a glass of orange squash a day and lots of tea and caffein. And do they even get vegetables for dinner??? NO!!!

Blind, endless technological progress and hunt for profit work exactly the same way. Well, they are part of science anyway. Happiness doesn't come through acquiring more goods and gadgets precisely because we are nature and Nature doesn't work the way Westerners want it to work.

We never want to make an effort. We want results now. We want to lose 10 pounds now. We go to the gym and then overwork ourselves because we want to lose the weight now and then we're so knackered that we are discouraged. My aunty tried yoga and said it was not for her because it was not efficient. We don't take the time to do things properly. We want the achievement and refuse the effort. We want the end and refuse the mean. We want everything brought to us onto a plate. Life doesn't work that way. Effort is inevitable. If you try to avoid it, Life will always come back at you to try and teach you - but what do we do? We reject the lessons. We reject Life. We stress for our exams because we want that degree - all we can see is the certificate that comes at the end - but we try to avoid the learning. I don't honestly care if I get my MSc degree or not. The route is the most important because it is the learning. We always see beyond the path.

Note: It's not that I think (Western) science is completely useless!! We just should not assume that it is the only way to see/explain things (and we should never forget the point of why we do things). Besides logic and reasons do not account for everything. Intuition (our heart) is also very important...

Saturday, 30 October 2004

Working in a care home actually doesn't make me sad at all. It doesn't depress me in the slightest. It is just totally awakening and interesting. And positive. It is amazing how comparable these beings are to babies. Babies pee and poo their pants. Babies' consciousness is not yet developped, this is why we have to be tolerant to what they may do "wrong". Babies babble. Babies go to bed early and sleep a lot. Babies need to be fed. Babies can't walk and need to be carried, or pushed in prams. Babies don't do much, they are. Babies are cute. "Dying beings" pee and poo their pants. "Dying beings" consciousness is no longer developped, this is why we have to be tolerant to what they may do "wrong". Some "Dying beings" sort of babble or talk nonsense. "Dying beings" go to bed early and sleep a lot. "Dying beings" need to be fed. "Dying beings" can't walk and need to be carried, or pushed in wheelchairs. "Dying beings" don't do much, they are. Yes, and now I think "dying beings" are cute, too.

Babies are at the beginning of their life cycle, the one extremity of a continuum. "Dying beings" are at the end of their life cycle, the other extremity of the continuum. They are just the same.

After a month at my job I also think the old folk are sweet. None of them is ugly, because they are all human beings. I don't dislike any of them, I can also say I love them all, yes I do. They have a lot of cuteness in them. Seeing and bathing old bodies is just the same as seeing and bathing babies' bodies, too. I just see them as human bodies - I just see them for what they are.

I love May when she talks nonsense with her cute and posh British English accent, because it's like she's "miming" teaching; she used to be a school teacher and it seems what is left out of her consciousness automatically just comes out. And when I listen and ask her questions even though I don't understand a thing I just love her because she is fascinating. Wonderful experience about human consciousness.

I love Lisa because she is adorable and funny and we have wonderful, simple conversations about life. I give her some of my youth and my "aliveness" and it makes her happy.

I am never angry at Jean when she shouts at me and calls me names because it is only the pain she has (left) that comes out and I understand her frustration from being so dependent. I never get angry at her when I have to take her to the toilet four times in an afternoon even if she is heavy and if I have to adjust her back onto her chair five times because she doesn't mean it, because I understand that her brain must work that way. (Oh and I would not even have imagined how much my "cognitive neuroscience of language" course and the theory of modularity help me to see her for what she is - some parts of her brain no longer work, and perhaps this is why she sometimes calls me a "dirty bitch"...)

I might never see Mr Wong again, but I am very grateful I had the opportunity to offer him loving hugs and kisses and to hold his hands in his last days. It would be selfish to be sad because it is time for him to go.

I am not sad that Helen died last week because every breath she took was so much pain that it made it extremely hard to care for her and she obviously needed the relief of death.

Certainly meditation helps me see my job for what it is. The place may not be ideal but once I accept it, all I do is bringing loving kindness to people and it doesn't matter where I work. Those people need it anyway. I do not work for myself, I work for them (or perhaps I work for myself through working for them).

I love my job because it reminds me what really matters in life. It helps me see things for what they are. It teaches me hundreds of things about myself. It is a wonderful opportunity to improve myself. And all I do when I'm there is live in the present moment, because it really is the only thing that matters...